UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DELL’INSUBRIA
DIPARTIMENTO DI BIOTECNOLOGIE E SCIENZE DELLA VITA
DOTTORATO IN MEDICINA CLINICA E SPERIMENTALE E MEDICAL HUMANITIES
XXX Ciclo TESI DI DOTTORATO
“THE UNDERSTANDING OF DEPRESSION IN THE LIGHT OF C. G. JUNG’S WORK”
Candidata: ROMINA MARIA SCHEUSCHNER Matr. 726024
Relatore: Chiar.mo Prof. CLAUDIO BONVECCHIO
Tutore Esterno: Prof. BERNARDO NANTE (Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires)
Anno Accademico 2017/2018
2 To my father.
“Sin otra luz y guía sino la que en el corazón ardía”
(San Juan de la Cruz)
3 INDEX OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ... 4
Acknowledgements ... 7
Warnings and abbreviation’s list ... 7
1. METHODOLOGY ... 11
1.1 The Phenomenological-hermeneutical Approach ... 12
1.2 On the Significance of ‘Understanding’ ... 15
1.3 Depression as Complex Phenomena: the Jungian Approach to Psychic Reality ... 17
2. SYMBOLISM OF MELANCHOLY IN WESTERN SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS ... 19
2.1 Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition: ... 21
2.2 The Dark Night of the Soul in Christian Mysticism ... 24
2.3 Nigredo in Alchemy ... 34
2.4 Saturn, the Dark Night and Nigredo as Symbols of the Threshold ... 39
3. TOWARDS A PRELIMINARY DEFINITION OF DEPRESSION IN THE LIGHT OF C. G. JUNG’S WORK ... 41
3.1 The Meaning of Depression since Modern Times ... 41
3.2 Jung on Psychological Diagnosis ... 47
3.3 Depression in C. G. Jung’s Work: from the Reductive to the Constructive approach ... 49
3.4 Depression in the Light of Jung’s Theory of Psychic Energy ... 50
4. DEPRESSION AS A PASSAGE EXPERIENCE THROUGHOUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS ... 57
4. 1 Depression as Consciousness’ Infantilism: Identification of Consciousness and Unconscious ... 59
4. 2 Depression as an Effect of a Conscious Realization: Separation between Conscious and Unconscious ... 70
4.3 Depression as an Unconscious Compensation (Loss and Calling of the Soul) ... 78
4. 4 Depression as an Incubation Process (Integration between Consciousness and Unconscious) ... 85
5. CONCLUSIONS ... 94
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 97
4
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this research is to reconstruct Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological understanding of depression, in other words, to give an account of the meaning of depressive phenomena for the development of human consciousness. Through this, we aspire to make a triple contribution:
1) Although there are some post-Jungian studies that address the subject of depression (E.
Harding, 1981; V. W. Odajnyk, 1983; W. Steinberg, 1989, among others) there is still a lack of research aiming to clarify and to critically reconstruct in detail the Jungian understanding of depression through a carefully study of his work, and with special attention to its sources.
2) As we will try to show, this reconstruction contributes to the human sciences, particularly health sciences, and especially regarding the possibility of conceiving a potentially transforming and meaningful dimension of depressive phenomena along the development of human consciousness, without neglecting its pathological and adaptive dimension. This becomes particularly valuable in the context of the increasing over-medicalization and
‘diagnostic inflation’ of depression that many scholars of the health sciences have evidenced in the last years (A. Horwitz and J. Wakefield, 2007; A. Frances, 2013; P. Pignarre, 2001).
3) Within certain limits we will try to show that the Jungian understanding of depression as a potentially transforming experience recovers psychologically a leitmotiv that traverses, through a variety of symbols and forms, a big part of Western history. This thread of meaning reveals itself particularly in the symbolism regarding Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition, in the notion of ‘the dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism, and in the alchemical nigredo.
To fulfill our purpose, we divide our work in five chapters. In the first chapter entitled
“Methodology” we settle down the methodological criteria that sustain our study and which may be synthetized as the phenomenological-hermeneutical approach. Since the Jungian work doesn’t have
5 any specific essays addressing the subject of depression, in this chapter we point out the several contexts that will nourish our subsequent work of symbolic amplification. We also dedicate a brief paragraph to the importance of ‘understanding’ (Spanish: comprender, German: verstehen) as a key approaching attitude in human sciences, which we will also privilege along our study (as its main title specifies).
In the second chapter entitled “Symbols of Melancholy in Western Spiritual Traditions”, we make a brief reference to melancholy as an historical antecedent of depression from Western antiquity to Renaissance. We clarify the different meanings that it possessed, that is: as an illness, as a temperament or a passing mood -as such, not necessarily pathological-, and as a spiritual gift regarding the destiny of the exceptional individual. We develop this last aspect and introduce the main symbols that came to be associated with this transforming dimension of melancholy along Western spiritual traditions. We particularly emphasize on the figure of Cronus-Saturn in the Greco- Roman tradition, the ‘dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism (with special attention to St. John of the Cross) and the nigredo in alchemy.
In the third chapter entitled “Towards a Definition of Depression in the Light of C. G. Jung’s work” we briefly address the modern concept of depression according the DSM V’s diagnostic criteria (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). We later introduce the increasing controversy regarding the ‘diagnostic inflation’ and the over-medicalization of depressive phenomena in the contemporary world. Following, we attempt to reconstruct a possible definition of depression in the light of a critical approach of the Jungian theoretical work. In this context, we establish the main differences between the causal-reductive Freudian point of view and the synthetic- constructive Jungian point of view.
In the fourth chapter entitled “Depression as a Threshold Experience in the Development of Consciousness”, we address the Jungian understanding of depression as a meaningful psychological experience in the light of the consciousness’s development which, far from being linear, alternates between regressive and progressive moments. We here recognize four meanings of depression as a potentially transforming regressive experience: depression as a childish conscious attitude (incest longing through an identification between consciousness and unconscious), depression as phenomena resulting from the assimilation of the unconscious (separation between consciousness and unconscious), depression as a compensation to one-sided conscious attitudes (‘loss of the soul’), depression as a state of incubation serving towards a future transformation of consciousness (integration between consciousness and unconscious). We amplify the meaning of these four
6 threshold moments (and the psychic experiences that accompany them) in the light of the symbolism of Western spiritual traditions that we already introduced before: Cronos-Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition, the ‘dark night of the soul’ according to Saint John of the Cross and the nigredo in alchemy.
Thereby, this chapter addresses our main objective of reconstructing the Jungian understanding of depressive phenomena, but in alignment with the previous chapters.
Finally, in the fifth chapter we undertake the conclusions, making a synthesis of the results and suggesting some new guidelines for further research, particularly regarding some practical implications regarding the treatment of depression, a subject that we only limit ourselves to mention, but do not develop.
In general terms, we hope this research may achieve a deeper understanding of depression from the Jungian point of view. We also aim to demonstrate that it does not only recover a normal dimension of depression (as an adaptive response to an experience of loss, without disregarding its eventually pathological meaning), but also a transforming dimension regarding a symbolic experience of death and rebirth that can take place along the development of human consciousness. As such, it may be considered as a constitutive experience of the human being that is called to transform himself through life. In either case, it is necessary to warn that the constructive Jungian point of view of depression that does not deny the causal point of view. On the contrary, it completes and amplifies it.
The choice of Carl Gustav Jung’s theory as a framework for our research finds its reason in the fact that, surprisingly, both in academic and in medical areas it still lacks the recognition that it deserves given the value of his work, as Bernardo Nante (2010) points out.1
It’s far away from our intentions to romantically praise depression and the suffering that comes along with it. We are also far from denying a symptomatic dimension of depressive phenomena in its biological, psychological and social aspects. However, we believe that it is necessary to recognize and to ‘remember’ some facets of depression mentioned in spiritual traditions, but apparently forgotten in contemporary times.
If certain depressive phenomena may be understood as a threshold along a path of conscious development, it’s not about how to eliminate this experience, but to discover the resources that may help to go through this dark and tough reality, searching for the seeds of a future inner growth. As an old alchemist said: “Habentibus symbolum facilis est transitus”.
1 It’s worth quoting Nante’s words regarding the significance and value of the Jungian work: “precisely, its merit consists in attempting to understand the human being, not according to what ‘he is being’, but according to that which he ‘could become’, starting with what ‘he is being’ (…)”. [Bernardo Nante, El Libro Rojo de Jung. Claves para la comprensión de una obra inexplicable (Buenos Aires: El Hilo de Ariadna, 2010), 51. Translation mine.].
7 Acknowledgements
I would like to especially thank Prof. Claudio Bonvecchio, for his advice, mentoring and support for the realization of this project; Prof. Bernardo Nante for mentoring me since I first started studying Jungian Psychology; José María Bocelli for his permanent support along the way; Fundación Vocación Humana for their permanent encouragement towards inner growth, even in the far distance;
Leandro Pinkler and Roberto Revello for their assistance when this research was still in its earliest stages of development. Last, but not least, I am deeply grateful to my mother, for the courage; and to my husband Alex, for the support along this big adventure.
Warnings and abbreviation’s list
Throughout this research, we will be quoting Jung’s texts according to the Collected Works (CW), Princeton University Press. Below, you will find a list of its volumes. Immediately after, we also point out those texts which, although not being part of the Collected Works, even so belong to Jungian work. We also provide an abbreviation’s list for the quotations.
A. COLLECTED WORKS (CW)
Volume 1 – Psychiatric Studies. CW 1 Volume 2 – Experimental Researches. CW 2
Volume 3 – Psychogenesis of Mental Disease. CW 3 Volume 4 – Freud & Psychoanalysis. CW 4
Volume 5 – Symbols of Transformation. CW 5 Volume 6 – Psychological Types. CW 6
Volume 7 – Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. CW 7 Volume 8 – Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche. CW 8
8 Volume 9 (Part 1) – Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. CW 9/1
Volume 9 (Part 2) – Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. CW 9/2 Volume 10 – Civilization in Transition. CW 10
Volume 11 – Psychology and Religion: West and East. CW 11 Volume 12 – Psychology and Alchemy. CW 12
Volume 13 – Alchemical Studies. CW 13 Volume 14 – Mysterium Coniunctionis. CW 14
Volume 15 – Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. CW 15 Volume 16 – Practice of Psychotherapy. CW 16
Volume 17 – Development of Personality. CW 17 Volume 18 – The Symbolic Life. CW 18
Volume 19 – General Bibliography. CW 19 Volume 20 – General Index. CW 20
B. SEMINARS
- The Zofingia Lectures
- Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminars Given in 1928-1930
- Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminars Given in 1934-1939 - Children’s Dreams
- The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga - Visions
C. AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- Memories. Dreams. Reflections.
D. LETTERS
- Letters I (1906-1945) - Letters II (1946-1955) - Letters III (1956-1961)
9 - The Jung-White Letters
- The Jung & Neumann Correspondence - The Freud-Jung Letters
E. THE RED BOOK
F. INTERVIEWS
- C. G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters
Abbreviations:
CW Jung, Carl Gustav. Collected Works. Princeton University Press.
The Red Book Jung, Carl Gustav. The Red Book. Liber Novus. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).
Memories Jung, Carl Gustav. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
Briefe Letters
Jung, Carl Gustav. Briefe I-III. (Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag, 2012).
Jung, Carl Gustav. Letters I-II. Edited by Gerhard Adler in collaboration with Aniela Jaffe. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)
Regarding St. John of the Cross’ works, which we also quote frequently, we will be following the Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, Ed. Allison Peers. (London: Burns & Oates, 1953).
For a more fluid reading, we will quote according the following abbreviations:
10 1A- 2A- 3A: Book 1-2-3 of Ascent to Mount Carmel. The first number after indicates the chapter, the second number indicates the paragraph.
1N- 2N: Book 1-2 of The Dark Night (chapter and paragraph ibid.) C: Canticle.
11 1. METHODOLOGY
C. G. Jung never wrote a separate book or essay about depression, nor developed a systematic theory about it. Nevertheless, he left many ideas on the subject scattered throughout his writings, that allow us to glimpse an implicit and constant presence of the topic throughout his entire work. It is true that these references may sometimes seem anecdotic, fragmentary and unevolved. Even so, through a carefully reading and study of his work it is possible to recognize a unique understanding of depressive phenomena and its possible meaning for the psychic and spiritual development of the human being.
As almost every other topic along the Jungian work, it calls for a critical study capable of recognizing the growth of a thinking in status nascens. Naturally, every innovative and creative thought might express itself chaotically at its beginning, but this ‘chaos’ does not discourage its richness, on the contrary, it can speak for it. Regarding this aspect of his work, Jung acknowledged:
“I can formulate my thoughts only as they break out of me. It is like a geyser. Those who come after me will have to put them in order”.2
Although some post-Jungian scholars address the subject depression (E. Harding3, W. Steinberg4 y R. F. Hobson5 among others), we still lack critical research focusing on the specific meanings that depression acquires throughout C. G. Jung’s work, with special consideration of its sources.
2 Jung quoted by Aniela Jaffé. The Myth of Meaning in the Work of C. G. Jung (Zürich: Daimon Verlag, 1984), 8.
3 Esther Harding, “The Value and Meaning of Depression” in Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought 12, no. 2 (1981): 113–35.
4 Warren Steinberg, “Depression: Some Clinical and Theoretical Observations” in Quadrant 17 (1984): 7–22.
5 Along their respective works, W. Steinberg (1989) and Robert F. Hobson (1955) acknowledge the value of the Jungian work for the distinction between depression as a necessary phase of psychic transformation, and depression as a psychopathological state. However, their research mainly focuses on psychopathological depression. Cf. Warren Steinberg, “Depression: A Discussion of Jung’s Ideas” in The Journal of Analytical Psychology 34, no. 4 (October 1989):
339–52. Also cf. Robert F. Hobson, “Archetypal Themes in Depression” in Journal of Analytical Psychology 1, no. 1 (January 1955): 33–47.
12 Concerning this, we believe that Walter Odajnyk’s study6 constitutes a pioneer work which is necessary to continue and develop.
Since C. G. Jung does not always undertake a critical revision of his concepts, our attempt of reconstructing and systemizing Jung’s understanding of depression may seem a bold initiative, or even a reckless task. That’s why it becomes necessary to explain the methodological criteria that will guide us along the chapters to come.
1.1 The Phenomenological-hermeneutical Approach
Our research will evolve according to the phenomenological-hermeneutical approach. By this, we are following the reconstruction of the Jungian method, as it has been undertaken by the Argentine scholar Bernardo Nante7, who insists on the necessity of understanding the Jungian work on its own terms. From a phenomenological point of view, we will explore and recognize the different formulations, affirmations and references that C. G. Jung makes on depression (and other associated terms and experiences) along his work, distinguishing and eventually articulating it’s many meanings.
We will privilege the texts of the Collected Works coming after 1913, which is when Jung separated himself from Freudian Theory and begun to develop his own psychological theory after publishing Symbols of Transformation. Concerning those texts which are not included in the Collected Works, we will especially refer to the Red Book8, which has been recently published and is intimately related to our topic of research. To a lesser extent and only whenever it becomes crucial to our research, we will also refer to the seminaries, to the epistolary exchange and to his autobiography, which are also not included in the Collected Works.
At the same time, our method will follow a hermeneutical approach since for the most part, whenever referring to depressive phenomena, C. G. Jung favors the symbolic language, instead of using the psychiatric language of his time. Thus, for example, in some of his letters he uses symbolic expressions such as “nach unten genötigt sein”9 (being needed in the lower parts), “das (uns)
6 Walter Odajnyk, “Jung’s Contribution to the Understanding of the Meaning of Depression” in Quadrant 16 (1983): 45–
61. 7 Cf. Bernardo Nante, “Notas Para Una Reformulación de La Epistemología Junguiana. Primera Parte” in Revista de Psicología UCA 2, no. 3 (2006).
8 We will follow the English edition: Carl Gustav Jung, The Red Book. Liber Novus. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani (London:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).
9 Jung’s letter to an unknown recipient, dating 09/03/1959 in Carl Gustav Jung, Briefe III. 1956-1961. (Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag, 2012), 237.
13 eigentümliche Loch”10 (each one’s own well), or “das Mysterium des Nachmittags” (noonday’s mystery)11. On the other hand, along his theoretical work we also find symbols appertaining many spiritual traditions, such as the alchemical nigredo, Saturn and the dark night of the soul. Furthermore, on the Red Book (which begins with Jung’s profound depressive experience) we come along the symbolic image of the desert, not to mention other images. Certainly, this attitude of prioritizing the symbolic language over psychiatric terminology may already anticipate a peculiar understanding of depressive phenomena and its potential relationship to the mystery of psychic transformation. By this, we are calling up the noted words by Gilbert Durand when he defines the symbol as “a mystery’s epiphany”.12 Correspondingly, in Psychological Types, Jung explains that symbols (in contrast to signs) are the best possible expression “of a relatively unknown thing, which (…) cannot be more clearly or characteristically represented”.13 As Mircea Eliade points out, the symbolic thinking is not an exclusive domain of the child, the poet or the mentally ill. On the contrary, it is connatural to every human being and reveals certain aspects of psychic reality that an exclusively rationalistic approach fails to perceive: “Le immagini, i simboli, i miti, non sono creazioni irresponsabili della psiche; essi rispondono a una necessità ed adempiono una funzione importante: mettere a nudo le modalità più segrete dell'essere. Ne consegue che il loro studio ci permette di conoscere meglio l'uomo, l'<<uomo tout court>> (…)”.14 In agreement with Eliade, Jung conceives the symbols of the spiritual traditions as psychic truths and, thus, as manifestations of the most intimate contents of the psyche. As such, they constitute a priceless path for a deeper understanding of the human being.
Thereby, it is necessary to make an approach that recognizes them as such, open to hear the richness of meaning that they whisper. To do this, the symbolic amplification becomes a hermeneutical bridge of maximal importance. In the light of these considerations, and to reconstruct Jung’s understanding of depression, it becomes necessary to make:
10 Jung’s letter to Erich Neumann, dating 05/01/1952 in Carl Gustav Jung, Briefe II. 1946-1955 (Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag), 2012, 242.
11 Jung’s letter to Erich Neumann, dating 28/02/1952 in Carl Gustav Jung, Briefe II. 1946-1955 (Ostfildern: Patmos Verlag, 2012), 250.
12 Cfr. Gilbert Durand, L’Imagination Symbolique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964).
13 Jung, CW 6, § 815. (Cf. also Jung, CW 11, § 307). For a deeper understanding of Jung’s concept of the symbol, cf.
Jolande Jacobi, Komplex, Archetypus, Symbol in der Psychologie C. G. Jungs (Düsseldorf: Walter Verlag, 1957).
14 Mircea Eliade, Immagini e Simboli (Milano: Jaca Book SpA, 1981), 16.
14 a) An inner contextualization of each of the meanings relating depressive phenomena
along Jung’s theoretical work.
Throughout a critical approach of Jung’s work, it is possible to recognize many different meanings of depressive phenomena. On our point of view, these different meanings are not to be considered separately, but as different moments taking place throughout the evolution of consciousness. The apparent fragmentation that Jung’s references to depressive phenomena may present, get enlightened by the work of Erich Neumann, Jung’s largely known follower and collaborator. On our point of view, Neumann’s work constitutes one of the best contributions to Jungian thought. On his work titled Ursprungsgeschichte des Bewußtseins (The Origins and History of Consciousness), C. G. Jung stated that it reunited and gave order to the disiecta membra of his whole work.
b) A contextualization of the symbols that came to be associated with melancholia along Western spiritual traditions.
As we previously highlighted, whenever referring to the experience of depression Jung mostly uses symbols of Western spiritual and philosophical traditions that in Antiquity came to be associated with melancholy. Especially relevant among them are Cronus-Saturn in Greco-Roman tradition, the
‘dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism and the nigredo in Alchemy. To reconstruct the Jungian understanding of depression, it will be necessary to deepen on the original meaning of these symbols, according to their respective tradition. On the second chapter, we attempt a brief approach to each of these symbols throughout their respective contexts, and we later return to them on the fourth chapter establishing a dialog with the Jungian work.
c) A delimitation of Jung’s concept of depression in dialog with Freudian theory and modern psychiatry
The ‘Weltanschauung’ that characterizes Jungian theory is radically different to the Weltanschauung of Freudian theory and modern psychiatry. Since Jung’s work has a language of its own, we believe that it deserves to be studied by itself and in its own terms. Nevertheless, it will be also necessary to avoid any isolations by establishing a dialog with Freudian theory whenever it becomes necessary to clarify Jung’s understanding of depression. This becomes especially necessary
15 for distinguishing between the Freudian causal-reductive approach to psychic phenomena, and the Jungian synthetic-constructive approach. At the same time, we can’t avoid making a brief reference to the significance given to diagnosis by modern psychiatry, in contrast to Jung’s theory.
1.2 On the Significance of ‘Understanding’
The phenomenological-hermeneutical method that we will be following aspires to highlight the importance of ‘understanding’ as a key modality for approaching any psychic phenomena. As a matter of fact, we believe that this is the research attitude to which the Jungian work calls for. As Bernardo Nante points out, this becomes especially evident in the Red Book, a highly complex work where Jung himself often refers to the concept of understanding (from the German word:
‘Verstehen’), opposing it to the act of explaining (‘Erklären’).15 Nevertheless, it is necessary to also avert that the significance of understanding for Jung does not only make itself evident in the Red Book, but traverses his entire theoretical work. In fact, Jung opposes the action of understanding to the act of psychiatric diagnosis as a mere way of labeling people: “Our understanding is in no way advanced when we know for certain the medical designation of the subject’s state of mind. The recognition that Schumann suffered from dementia praecox and K. F. Meyer from periodic melancholia contributes nothing whatever to an understanding of their psyches. People are only too ready to stop at the diagnosis, thinking that any further understanding can be dispensed with”.16
The distinction between explaining and understanding goes back to the work of the German philosopher Wilhem Dilthey (1833-1911), who by the end of XIX century insisted on the necessity of distinguishing between the methodology of the natural sciences and the methodology of the human sciences. Whereas the natural sciences generate new knowledge through explanations following the cause-effect principle, the human sciences call for understanding, which exceeds every explanation and relates to a more holistic, synthetic and integral apprehension. Whereas in natural sciences what matters is the cause, in the human sciences what matters is the meaning. The meaning is an irreducible element that cannot be dissected, and can only be deepened. However, very often the explaining
15 Bernardo Nante, El Libro Rojo de Jung. Claves para la comprensión de una obra inexplicable (Buenos Aires: El Hilo de Ariadna, 2010), 94-96.
16 Jung, CW 18/I, § 795.
16 method of natural sciences is applied when approaching human phenomena, although it shouldn’t.
William James gives a clear example of this when referring to ‘medical materialism’ and its ‘too simpleminded system of thought’ that attempts to explain mystic phenomena on the basis of a physical pathology: “Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. (…) All such mental overtensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (…), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover. And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined”.17
This tendency of applying the explaining method of natural sciences when approaching human phenomena persists until today. One can observe it clearly when it comes to the treatment of psychic phenomena, a danger that Jung already perceived in his clinical practice. This led him to develop his own constructive method, which diverged from Freud’s analytic-reductive view. Through the constructive point of view, Jung retained that it was not only important to discover the repressed infantile experiences, but also to discover the ‘understanding forwards’18, that is, the understanding leading to psychological development: “This is how we have to consider the human psyche, too. Only on one side is it something that has come to be, and, as such, subject to the causal standpoint. The other side is in the process of becoming, and can only be grasped synthetically or constructively. The causal standpoint merely inquires how this psyche has become what it is, as we see it today. The constructive standpoint asks how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future”.19
Jung was far from disesteeming the value of the causal-reductive standpoint, but he warned every now and again of the risk of falling into reductionisms. Thereby, by accepting Jung’s invitation to the ‘understanding’ standpoint and thus by trying to deepen our understanding of depressive phenomena, we are asking ourselves about the significance of that soul’s ‘bridge into its own future’:
“Cause alone does not make development possible. For the psyche the reduction ad causam is the very reverse of development; it binds the libido to the elementary facts. From the standpoint of rationalism this is all that can be desired, but from the standpoint of the psyche it is lifeless and comfortless boredom (…) the psyche cannot always remain on this level but must go on developing, the causes transforming themselves into means to an end, into symbolical expressions for the way
17 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, 1905).
18 Jung, CW 3, § 391.
19 Jung, CW 3, § 399.
17 that lies ahead. The exclusive importance of the cause, i.e., thus disappears and emerges again in the symbol (…)”.20
Certainly, every attempt towards a deeper understanding will require an equally important attempt of understanding oneself, to which the reader of this work is invited, as well as who is writing.
In either case, it is necessary to remember that on the contrary to any explanation (which has a definite beginning and an equally definite ending) the understanding of the symbols, as of every human phenomena, constitutes a permanent task and, as such, it doesn’t finish. However, every step forward becomes essential, because it has to do with the ‘essence’. In words of Jung: “The ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed, but not described. Even so, the bare circumscription denotes an essential step forward in our knowledge (…)”.21
1.3 Depression as Complex Phenomena: the Jungian Approach to Psychic Reality
Throughout our research, we will study depression as a psychic reality. However, our methodological reductionism should not be interpreted as an ontological reductionism. Thus, we agree with David Rosen when he states that depression should be understood as a complex reality involving four factors: biological, psychological, social and existential/spiritual.22 For Jung, the psyche does not constitute an isolated agent. On the contrary, it’s part of an integral and tripartite anthropology, where the human being is conceived as body, psyche and spirit. According to the Jungian Weltanschauung (and in agreement with the traditional anthropologies) the psyche constitutes an immediate reality. As such, it fulfills a mediating function: “All that I experience is psychic. Even physical pain is a psychic image which I experience; my sense-impressions- for all that they force upon me a world of impenetrable objects occupying space- are psychic images, and these alone constitute my immediate experience, for they alone are the immediate objects of my consciousness (…). We are in truth so wrapped about by psychic images that we cannot penetrate at all to the essence of things external to ourselves. All our knowledge consists of the stuff of the psyche which, because it alone is immediate, is superlatively real”.23
20 Jung, CW 8, § 46.
21 Jung, CW 9/I, § 265.
22 David Rosen, “Depression and Suicide” in Open Questions in Analytical Psychology: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress for Analytical Psychology Zurich 1995 (Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag, 1997), 612–19.
23 Jung, OC8, § 680.
18 At the same time, for Jung psychic reality is not only immediate, but fundamentally creative:
“I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. Therefore, I speak of ‘esse in anima’, the only form of being that we can experience directly. We can distinguish no form of being that is not psychic in the first place”.24
As an immediate and creative reality, the psyche does not only get affected by the body and the spirit (understood as a hypothetic dimension of meaning and sense), but it does also have an impact on the body and can become an obstacle or a channel for the manifestation of the spirit. That’s why every psychological approach of depression calls for a permanent dialog with the disciplines of the body, and the disciplines of the spirit.
24 Letter from Jung to Dr. Kurt Plachte, dating 10/01/1929, in Jung, Briefe I, 86.
19 2. SYMBOLISM OF MELANCHOLY IN WESTERN SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
Already having established the methodological criteria for our research, in this chapter we will make an introduction to some of the symbols that came to be associated with melancholy along Western spiritual traditions. As we have already highlighted, we believe they constitute an important hermeneutical key for clarifying Jung’s understanding of depression. However, before diving into the symbolic perspective, it is necessary to make a brief historical reference to the concept of melancholy across Western history.
The use of the word ‘depression’ referring to affective experiences of recurrent sadness or apathy, psychomotor inhibition and moral pain is relatively recent. As Stanley Jackson points out, in 1725 Richard Blackmore (an English poet and physician) was one of the first to use the term
‘depression’ (latin depressio/ deprimere: to ‘press down’) to designate a psychological disposition which was as old as humanity itself, but until then (at least since Hyppocratic times) had been known by the name of melancholy.
Without a doubt, melancholy could be considered the psychological phenomena that captured the most attention across Western thought over the past two millennia. As it is well-known, melancholy has not only been an object of study in medicine, but also in religion, art and philosophy.
We will make some mandatory references to the history of melancholy, but it is beyond our scope to get very much into its detail. In any case, there already exist many treatises on the subject that the reader will be able to consult.25 For now, it will be sufficient to say that, for over the past 2000 years and more, melancholy has not only been considered an illness. It also constituted a temperament and a passing mood, which were not necessarily pathological. Furthermore, it even got to be understood as a divine gift related to the destiny of the exceptional individual. According to ancient Hippocratic
25 We mention a few of them: Stanley Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). See also: Alina Feld, Melancholy and the Otherness of God: A Study in the Genealogy, Hermeneutics, and Therapeutics of Depression (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011). Jean Clair, “Sole nero. Genio e follia in Occidente. Note e progetti per un’esposizione” in Arcipelago Malinconia. Scenari e parole dell’interiorità. Ed. por Biancamaria Frabotta (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 2001), 169–76.
20 medicine and psychology (which goes on until the Renaissance), the black bile (ancient greek: µέλας
“black” and χολή “bile”) constituted one of the four fundamental humors. As such, it was an integral component of every human being (along with blood, phlegm and yellow bile) and only its imbalance leaded to illness.26
At the same time, the Hippocratic classification established a relationship between microcosmos and macrocosmos, since the four temperaments corresponded themselves with the four elements, the four cardinal points, the four seasons, the subdivisions of the day and the life phases.
In words of Ioan P. Couliano: “The series of yellow bile comprises fire, the wind Eurus, summer, high noon, and maturity; that of blood air, the Zephyr, spring, morning, youth; that of black bile the earth, the wind Boreas, autumn, evening, and the age of sixty”.27
The predominance of one of the humors determined the temperament: choleric or bilious, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic. The melancholic temperament was considered the most unfortunate of the four types. However, the unflattering description of the melancholic type was soon relativized by some authors that averted in melancholy a condition that frequently came along with the geniality of the exceptional individual. Without a doubt, the widely known Problem XXX by Pseudo-Aristotle (which some specialists attribute to Theophrastus28) is the testimony that best reflects this re-signification of melancholy, in which converge the medical Hyppocratic notion of melancholy and the platonic notion of divine madness: “Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?”29
The idea of melancholy intended as a spiritual gift related to the destiny of the exceptional individual gravitates, under many symbolic forms, across the entire Western history, and starts to slowly vanish in modern times. In his essay entitled “Malinconia senza Dei”, James Hillman argues that, when changing its name to ‘depression’, melancholy lost its original meaning of a cosmic force, thus becoming a synonym of illness.30 However, the symbols that speak for this antique dimension of melancholy as a gift are beyond time, and constitute a treasure for our topic of research. Actually, Jung refers to them more than once.
26 Hipócrates, Tratados hipocráticos (Madrid: Gredos, 1983), Vol. I, 284.
27 Ioan P. Couliano, “Melancholy and Saturn” in Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 46.
28 Walter Müri, “Melancholie und schwarze Galle” in Museum Helveticum 10, no. 1 (1953), 21–38.
29 Aristotle quoted by Klibansky, Saxl & Panofsky, Saturn and Melancholy (New York: Basic Books Inc. Publishers, 1964), 18.
30 Cf. James Hillman, “Malinconia Senza Dei” in Arcipelago Malinconia. Scenari e parole dell’interiorità Ed. by Biancamaria Frabotta (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 2001), 3-16.
21 In this sense, we believe it is necessary to establish a dialog between the Jungian theoretical work and the symbols of melancholy along Western spiritual traditions. We will particularly refer to Cronus-Saturn in Greco-Roman tradition, the ‘dark night of the soul’ in Christian mysticism and the nigredo in alchemy. Most certainly, among these contexts alchemy constitutes the ultimate key source to the entire Jungian work31. However, we cannot avoid researching the symbolism of Saturn and the dark night of the soul, since all these traditions do not flow in parallel. On the contrary, they often relate to each other, conforming a vivid unity of symbolic meaning. To justify the choice of these symbolic contexts, we will make a brief introduction to each one of them.
2.1 Saturn in the Greco-Roman tradition:
It’s hard to establish the exact point of Western history, at which the symbolic association between the ‘gift’ of melancholy and Saturn begun to take place. As it usually happens with the symbolic images and myths, one can clearly recognize when they flourish, but its real origin often vanishes in the mists of time. In their largely known work on Saturn and melancholy, Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl declare that this connection would have been first established in the IX century by some Arabic authors (Abu-Masar, Alcabitius), whose astrological notion of Saturn as a planet converges with the Roman god Saturn and the mythical Greek Cronus: “Even in the sources from which the Arabic astrological notion of Saturn had arisen, the characteristics of the primeval Latin god of crops Saturn had been merged with those of Kronos, the son of Uranus, whom Zeus had dethroned and castrated, as well as with Chronos the god of time, who in turn had been equated with the two former even in antiquity; to say nothing of ancient oriental influences, whose significances we can only roughly estimate”.32
On the other hand, in his book entitled Stanzas Giorgio Agamben argues that the ambivalence of melancholy was already known since the Christian Middle Ages.33 However, Ioan P. Couliano stated clearly: “Indeed, the ambiguity of Saturn was no more foreign to the Middle Ages than to antiquity, but Ficino should probably be credited with having superimposed the two faces of
31 For an introduction on the significance of alchemy for the Jungian theory, cf. Bernardo Nante y Francisco García Bazán,
“Introducción a la edición española” en Carl Gustav Jung, Psicología y alquimia OC 12 (Madrid: Trotta, 2005).
32 Klibansky, Saxl & Panofsky, Saturn and Melancholy (New York: Basic Books Inc. Publishers, 1964), 133.
33 Cf. Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
22
“Saturnism” upon the two faces –the bestial one and the face of genius- belonging to melancholy”.34 On the undoubted ambivalence that reunites the destinies of Saturn and melancholy, Klibansky et.
Al., assert: “It was not only the combination of cold and dryness that linked black bile with the apparently similar nature of the star; nor was it only the tendency to depression, loneliness and visions, which the melancholic shared with the planet of tears, of solitary life and of soothsayers;
above all, there was an analogy of action. Like melancholy, Saturn, that demon of the opposites, endowed the soul both with slowness and stupidity and with the power of intelligence and contemplation”.35
As Couliano points out, this symbolic convergence reaches its maximum flourishment in the Florentine Renaissance. The words of Marsilio Ficino reflect it clearly: “The nature of the melancholic humor follows the quality of earth, which never dispersed like the other elements, but concentrated more strictly in itself… such is also the nature of Mercury and Saturn, in virtue of which the spirits, gathering themselves at the center, bring back the apex of the soul from what is foreign to it to what is proper to it, fix it in contemplation, and allow it to penetrate to the center of things”.36
As Alina Feld specifies, in Ficino’s portrait of melancholy (De vita) takes place a unique hermeneutical event, because of the convergence of two big symbolic traditions: the Western medical and philosophical tradition (including the Hyppocratic theory of the four humors, the platonic notion of divine madness and the pseudo-Aristotelian theory relating melancholy and exceptionality) and the mythological-astrological tradition (Greco-Roman myth of Cronus/ Saturn and astrological symbolism of the planet Saturn).37
Cronus/ Saturn presents a highly complex and ambivalent symbolism, since the many characterizations along the different sources and myths vary dramatically38: castrator of his own father, devourer of his own children, God of the exile, but also of agriculture and the Golden Age, god of divine contemplation and of hidden knowledge, god of the melancholic, but also of the genius.39 As Klibansky et. al. point out, although all the Greek gods manifest ambivalences, in none of them this aspect becomes so sharply emphasized as in Saturn: “His nature is a dual one not only
34 Couliano, Eros and magic in the Renaissance, 49.
35 Klibansky et. al., Saturn and Melancholy, 158-59.
36 Ficino quoted by Agamben, Stanzas, 12-13. For the links between melancholy and Saturn in Ficino, see also:
“Melancholy and Saturn”, in Couliano, Eros and magic in the Renaissance.
37 See “Children of Saturn” in Alina Feld, Melancholy and the Otherness of God, 43-61.
38 As every symbolic study shows, the many aspects of a symbol, although coming from different contexts, may be understood as the many facets of one totality which, ultimately, constitutes a mystery.
39 On the symbolism of Saturn see “Sobre Saturno” in Natale Conti, Mitología (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1988), 116-26.
23 with regard to his effect on the outer world, but with regard to his own –as it were, personal- destiny, and this dualism is so sharply marked that Kronos might fairly be described as god of opposites”.40
From a different perspective, Augusto Vitale also supports the idea of an own personal destiny that would make itself evident along the many ‘graces’ and ‘disgraces’ in Saturn’s drama. We agree with Vitale’s statement regarding the possibility of understanding Saturn in relationship to an individuation process: “The entire story of Chronus seems guided by the leitmotif of his dogged search for and defense of his own individuality. This dramatic aspect is that which distinguishes Cronus from the other Gods. (…) The risks Cronus runs are basically those of death: in the first stage, a death in the form of non-birth, of being prevented from being born; in the second stage, a death as loss of himself”.41
Similarly, Ficino also pays attention to the factor of individuality shared by the symbolism of Saturn and melancholy. On this, Feld asserts: “Ficino notes that the domain signified by Saturn is that of the exceptional individual: Saturn cannot signify the common quality and lot of the human race, but only that of an individual set apart from others, divine or brutish, blessed or bowed down with extreme misery. (…) Since Saturn signifies the individual and also melancholy, individuality and melancholy become codependent”.42
Since Jungian theory defines the psychic cure in relationship to the individuation process and the realization of one’s own singularity, in the sense of becoming one’s own potentialities, we believe that it could be meaningful to study Jung’s understanding of depression in the light of Saturn’s symbolism.43 This becomes fruitful in two ways: the symbolism of Saturn may shed light on Jung’s understanding of depression and, at the same time, Jung’s understanding of depression may help to understand Saturn’s symbolism from a psychological point of view. This way, through a symbolic amplification, the mythical elements and the psychological elements mutually clarify. Although showing some slight differences, we can find an antecedent of this approach in the already mentioned
40 Klibansky et. al, Saturn and Melancholy, 134.
41 Augusto Vitale, “The Archetype of Saturn or the Transformation of the Father” in Fathers and Mothers, ed. Patricia Berry (Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc., 1973), 48.
42 Feld, Melancholy and the Otherness of God, 55.
43 The references to Saturn in the Jungian work are multiple, especially regarding the alchemical nigredo. For example, in Mysterium Coniunctionis Jung mentions the alchemist Michael Maier and his pilgrimage through the Ostia Nili, a journey that begins in Saturn and ends in Saturn: “Saturn has here changed from a star of ill men into a “domus barbae”
(House of the Beard), where the ‘wisest of all’, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, imparts wisdom”. Jung, CW 14 /I, § 303. As Ficino, Jung had recognized himself as a Saturn’s child, an anecdotic but still curious fact. In a letter dating 1955, he states: “The ruler of my birth, old Saturnus, slowed down my maturation process to such an extent that I became aware of my own ideas only at the beginning of the second half of my life, i.e., exactly with 36 years”. (Letter from Jung to Upton Sinclair dating 25/02/1955 in Jung, Letters II, 232).
24 study by Augusto Vitale.44 Alluding to the hermeneutical possibilities of Saturn’s symbolic universe, A. Feld also states: “The observations on Saturnine nature allow for highly complex and contradictory hermeneutical possibilities”.45
As it is well known, in the Greco-Roman tradition the figures of Cronus and Saturn often overlap. Taking this into account, we will refer to Greek mythology, as well as to Roman mythology.
Eventually, we will also refer to other contexts since Saturn’s symbolism also manifests in other traditions (hermeticism, astrology, alchemy and folklore).
2.2 The Dark Night of the Soul in Christian Mysticism
Across history, the Christian tradition has acknowledged different types of spiritual dryness that might come along the path of spiritual transformation: the spiritual tepidity of serving two masters (Mt 6: 24), the terrifying ‘noonday demon’ of acedia –subtly described by Evagrius Ponticus46-, the illness –and eventually also subterfuge-, which Santa Teresa of Avila described as melancholy47, distinguishing it from spiritual dryness, just to mention a few examples.48
In either case, St. John of the Cross is undoubtedly the one author where the treatment and study of spiritual dryness along the mystic pathway arrives to its maximum degree of subtlety. In fact, according to St. John of the Cross the psychological and spiritual dryness –expressed under the symbol of the night- turns out to be a mystical stage on the pathway towards the union of the soul with the divine. The phenomenological similarity, not to say coincidence, between the psychic experiences that St. John of the Cross illustrates under the symbol of the ‘dark night of the soul’, and the clinical picture that psychiatry describes under the title of depression is largely known and –to some extent-indisputable.49 As Javier Álvarez points out: “Through a confrontation between the
44 While Vitale (1977) focuses on Saturn’s myth as a symbol of the father, our proposal includes a wider perspective attending Saturn as a symbol of the threshold. Certainly, this includes the father-child dynamics, but also goes beyond it.
45 Feld, Melancholy and the Otherness of God, 54.
46 Evagrio Póntico, Trattato pratico sulla vita monastica (Roma: Città Nuova Editrice, 1992). Evagrius Ponticus considered acedia as a sin, a moral connotation which was still absent in Greek melancholy. However, Agamben (1993) states that the ambivalent connotations of acedia and melancholy mutually influenced each other, and thus criticizes Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxl for not having included the patristic literature on the ‘noonday’s demon’ in their analysis of Durer’s Melancholy.
47 Cf. Mónica Balltondre Pla, “Encuentros entre Dios y la melancolía: los consejos de Teresa de Ávila sobre cómo se han de tratar las melancólicas de sus ‘Fundaciones’” in Revista de Historia de La Psicología 28, no. 2/3 (2007), 197–203.
48 Despite the different names, it is necessary to avert that in some authors these psychological and spiritual phenomena sometimes get distinguished, while in others they overlap.
49 On the links between the depressive state from the point of view of psychiatry, and the experience of the dark night of the soul, cf. Javier Álvarez, Mística y Depresión: San Juan de La Cruz (Madrid: Trotta, 1997). By the way, the suffering
25 passive night of the spirit according to Saint John of the Cross and the endogenous depression according to psychiatric manuals, one can tell that it is clearly the same phenomenological process, and this is something that cannot be overlooked at all by any psychiatrist handling any descriptions relating endogenous or melancholic depression”.50
Analogously, Daniel Hell affirms: “Saint John of the Cross conceived the dark night as a purification that could lead to an illumination. Yet by judging by its appearance the dark night meets mostly the criteria that according the WHO should meet any depressive episode. From a symptomatic point of view, it is also hard to distinguish from acedia (…)”.51
However, it should be noticed that this phenomenological affinity (which today comes to be interpreted in the most different ways) was already recognized by St. John of the Cross himself, who insisted on the need of distinguishing the dark night experience from melancholy intended as a disease, and even from the sin associated to acedia.52 On his prologue to The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the mystic clearly states: “It is a hard and miserable thing for souls when they cannot comprehend their own state, nor meet with anyone who can. For when God leads any one along the highest road of obscure contemplation and dryness, such an one will think himself lost; and in this darkness and trouble, distress and temptation, some will be sure to tell him, like the comforters of Job, that his sufferings are the effects of melancholy, or of disordered health, or of natural temperament, or, it may be, of some secret sin for which God has abandoned him. Yea, they will decide at once that he is, or that he has been, exceedingly wicked, seeing that he is thus afflicted”.53
Yet at the same time, he warns of the opposite danger: “For there are persons who will think, or their confessors for them, that God is leading them along the road of the dark night of spiritual purgation, and yet, perhaps, all is nothing but imperfection of sense or spirit; and others also who
of such anguish and desolation experiences on the mystic pathway is not exclusive to St. John of the Cross, but goes through the lives and doctrines of numberless Christian mystics, that came before and after the Spanish mystic. Just to give a few examples, Jean van Leeuwen also makes a detailed description of the sufferings that the soul experiences on its way to God, and John Tauler analyzes the torments that come along the mystic path.
50 Translation mine. Javier Álvarez, Mística y depresión, 16.
51 Translation mine. Regina Bäumer and Michael Platting ed., Noche Oscura y depresión, crisis espirituales y psicológicas: naturaleza y diferencias (Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer, 2011), 17.
52 One important antecedent of these distinctions is to be found in Santa Teresa de Avila, who already distinguished between melancholy as an illness (which required medical intervention), and melancholy as a moral weakness (that is, as a subterfuge for the exemption of the work duties). However, Santa Teresa also spoke of the spiritual dryness which was an inherent stage of every mystic path, since it was through the soul’s wounds that God spoke to the mystic. Even Santa Teresa suffered from this inner dryness which, by the way, was phenomenologically alike to certain melancholic experiences. Regarding this, it’s worth mentioning St. Paul’s distinction between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow:
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death”. (2Co 7, 10)
53 Saint John of the Cross, “Prologue” in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, § 4.
26 think they do not pray when they pray much, and, on the other hand; there are those who think they pray much when they do not in reality pray scarcely at all”.54
The Spanish mystic’s remarks allow to glimpse the extreme affinity between the dark night experience and melancholy, but also a subtle distinction. We believe that these subtle remarks not always hold together among some modern interpretations of the dark night phenomena. Thereby, some modern medical studies tend to develop a pathologizing approach, reducing the dark night experience to a morbid depression (sometimes recognizing the value of Saint John of the Cross’s work, while other times even denying it). On the opposite shore, some traditionalist studies that try to rescue the spiritual significance of the dark night, on occasions tend to overlook its psychological meaning. In other words, whereas according to some approaches the phenomenological affinity ends up in a confusion, according to others, the distinction attempt ends up in a radical separation. Within such a state of the art, our research aspires to develop an intermediate position, in the line of our phenomenological-hermeneutical approach. Whenever referring to the ‘dark night of the soul’ as a symbolic resource for our research, we start with the assumption that the dark night gives an account of a suffering experience which is as real (i.e. symptomatic) as symbolic. Symptomatic, because it speaks for an actual torment that meets the same symptoms as any other depression, and even worse (as St. John of the Cross states). Symbolic, because the main character understands it as a threshold experience towards a state of inner plenitude, which happens to make a subtle but undisputable distinction with any other morbid state that would only lead to a deterioration of personality. On this, Mireille Mardon synthetizes in a clarifying way the differences between morbid melancholy and the dark night experience: “As a matter of fact, on the contrary to the melancholic crisis, it seems as if the night of the spirit produces a real psychological change, with the subject emerging from it transformed, as the caterpillar turning into a butterfly”.55
In the light of these asseverations, one should also consider the words of St. John of the Cross when affirming that only the one person who has experienced this, will also be able to communicate something of it, or at least to try it: “Before we enter on an explanation of these, it is right we should understand that they are the words of the soul already in the state of perfection, which is the union of love with God, when it has gone through the straits, tribulations and severities, by means of the spiritual training , of the strait way of everlasting life, by which ordinarily the soul attains to this high and divine union with God”.56
54 Ibidem, § 6.
55 Translation mine. Mireille Mardon, cited on Javier Álvarez, Mística y depresión, 254.
56 SJC, “Prologue” to Dark Night, § 2.
27 However, this experience is to such point ineffable that it can only be ‘darkly’ communicated through the language of symbol. As St. John of the Cross points out: “For so great are the trials, and so profound the darkness, spiritual as well as corporal, through which souls must pass, (…) that no human learning can explain them, nor experience describe them. He only who has passed through them can know them, but even he cannot explain them”.57 According to this, we agree with Jean Baruzi when affirming that St. John of the Cross’s night is not to be understood only as a sign, but as an authentic symbol: “On Ascent to Mount Carmel and The Dark Night we find the symbol of the night in a pure state. And since the poem “The dark night” leads us to the most elevate mystical phases, we can be sure that within the work by Saint John of the Cross the night symbol is clearly an utter symbol (…). Thanks to a mystical imagination’s prodigy, the night is at the same time the most intimate translation of the experience and the experience itself (…). Therefore, it’s unmeasurable and deserves to be called a symbol, technically speaking”.58
We highlight Baruzi’s assertive observation on the symbol of the night as the experience itself, as well as its intimate translation: an experience of torment, but also projected towards a higher meaning. The symbol of the night according to St. John of the Cross is a pure subtlety. It thus becomes a landscape of the soul, since it manifests a variety of meanings: it’s a night as the starting point of the soul (purgation of the appetites), it’s a night as the path through which the soul passes and it’s also a night as an arrival point, i.e., God, who is a night for the soul in this life: “The journey of the soul to the divine union is called night for three reasons. The first is derived from the point from which the soul sets out, the privation of the desire of all pleasure in all things of this world, by detachment therefrom. This is as night for every desire and sense of man. The second, from the road by which it travels; that is faith, for faith is obscure, like night, to the understanding. The third, from the goal to which it ends, God, incomprehensible and infinite, who in this life is as night to the soul”.59
Furthermore, the night according to St. John of the Cross is also a ‘first night’ (purgative), a
‘midnight’ (illuminative, faith night) and a ‘third night or antelucano’ (unitive, contemplation): “(…) the three nights are but one divided into three parts. The first, which is that of sense, may be likened to the commencement of night (…). The second, of faith, may be compared to mid-night, which is
57 SJC, “Prologue” to The Ascent of Mount Carmel, § 1.
58 Translation mine. Jean Baruzi, San Juan de la Cruz y el problema de la experiencia mística (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1991), 328-329. Baruzi also expresses: “The symbol demands us to express not the image for the idea, but the idea for the image”. Ibidem, 331.
59 SJC, I A, 2, 1.
28 utter darkness. The third resembles the close of night, which is God, when the dawn of day is at hand”.60
Yet it is still the one and only night, from which are part the night of the senses (“It now remains for me to give certain counsels whereby the soul may know how to enter this night of sense and may be able so to do. To this end it must be known that the soul habitually enters this night of sense in two ways: the one is active; the other passive”61), and the night of the spirit, both manifesting an active and a passive dimension.
The night of the senses is intended to be a path for the purgation of appetites, which refer to the most external and inferior part of the soul: “The soul must of necessity –if we would attain the divine union of God- pass through the dark night of mortification of the desires, and self-denial in all things. The reason is this; all love we bestow on creatures is in the eyes of God mere darkness (…)”.62 At this point the night comes to be associated with nudity, not of the things themselves, but of their desire in the sense of an attachment: “I call this detachment the night of the soul, for I am not speaking here of the absence of things (…) but of that detachment which consists in suppressing desire (…) even though possession may be still retained”.63 On the other hand, the night of the senses on its passive dimension becomes a purgative contemplation: “It went forth, from itself and from all things, in a dark night, by which is meant here purgative contemplation (…) which leads the soul to deny itself and all besides”.64
On the other hand, the active night of the spirit refers to the purgation made by the night on the superior and spiritual part of the human being: “The soul, which God is leading onwards, enters not into the union of love at once when it has passed through the aridities and trials of the first purgation and night of sense; yea, rather it must spend some time, perhaps years, after quitting the state of beginners, in exercising itself in the state of proficient”.65 The night of the spirit is much darker, since it reaches not only the senses, but also the understanding, memory and will: “For the darkness of the spiritual part is by far the greater (…). For, however dark a night may be, something can always be seen, but in true darkness nothing can be seen; and thus in the night of sense there still remains some light, for the understanding and reason remain, and are not blinded. But this spiritual
60 SJC, I A, 2, 5.
61 SJC, I A, 13, 1.
62 SJC, I A, 4, 1.
63 SJC, I A, 3, 4.
64 SJC, I N, 1.
65 SJC, II N, 1, 1.
